Now there's a Line of Beauty...

... It's entirely comprehensible why Nick Guest's boogeying on down with the ex-PM Mrs Thatcher has been flagged up as a highlight of the series by numerous journos. It IS the only highlight of the series, except perhaps for the welly-wanging. Question - was that supposed to be humorous? The plot moved with the speed of a toked sloth. It had all the drama, suspense and nail-biting excitement of Gardener's World. The Line MUST have won the Booker prize for its writing style; the plot is about as twisted as a straight line (not an ogee) and it shed all the illumination on the 1980s of a liquorise torch in a sewer. The only plot twist was that Leo had AIDs which we knew last week because his boyfriend coughed. And everyone knows that all AIDs victims cough - otherwise, it might have spread silently and you might have actually needed to take a test to be diagnosed. I suppose they could have gone the whole hog; I recommend huge, pustulous, yellow boils... and drooling. Or perhaps Cybermen.

The rest of the program undulated slowly through ugly old Conservatives standing about and young gay Conservatives who could moonlight as male models f****g. All gay blokes in The Line are gorgeous, sophisticated, thick-haired specimens. Except if they're working class - in which case... they are squat and cough. Oh, and everyone snorts coke... all the time. As raw screen time out of 60 minutes - 15 minutes was young men in speedos, 10 minutes was close-ups of rolled paper shoved in noses or people cutting up coke with credit cards, 5 minutes consisted of coked-out but desperately elegant, perspiring blokes humping each other and the remaining 30 minutes was elderly homophobes with white hairs protruding from their ears saying how great Maggie was. Feel you've missed anything? I could entirely understand why the lead characters wanted to be out of their head all the time. I wouldn't be able to get through one of those dinner parties without 'accidently' switching the classical music for Bob the Builder, 'casually' starting a conversation about obscure and gross-out medical conditions or just saying "SETTEE" really loudly.

The one saving grace was Wani Ouradi, one of the first actors on a TV program that when a character described them as "the most beautiful young man I've ever seen", I could whole-heartedly agree with him. Well, perhaps not *the* most beautiful young man - my BF might get offended but he was flipping hot. This made Martine an intensely sympathetic character despite her not appearing much, I could feel her frustration - just fancy being engaged to *that* and not being able to get a decent firm, enthusiastic shag. But I could only stare mesmerised at Wani's elegance and poise for so long and after 40 minutes, Nick Guest's lurch towards Maggie T. was the grasp of a dying drama for air. I was cheering him on, boinging up and down in my seat. At last, someone would move fast. Someone would do something but grab each others dicks, snort coke, pose in lycra or make droning chit-chat... or wang wellies! Someone would actually dance! Wheee! Subversive!

I'll watch the remaining 1/3rd but I'm not expecting any major shocks.